Tech-sand is my moniker for technology that keeps us from delivering value...

Thursday, December 9, 2010

High Performance Java Environments

For the past several weeks I have been monitoring a set of Java business tier and portal servers for performance issues related to load and possibly configuration. Both servers run in Windows 64 bit with 64 bit JVMs. The portal server is using low-pause concurrent mark sweep garbage collection while the other is using a more traditional 32 bit garbage collection algorithm. I am considering adding additional CPU cores to each box.

While I was trying to work inside the tight boundaries of Windows processing, I longed for the Linux world of Java Application Servers. Where I work, Linux is not an option, so I started to explore additional options. That is when I re-stumbled upon Azul Systems. Azul has two products, Zing and Vega 3. I have asked for a demo/trial of the Zing product. Zing seems to be a specialized JVM and then some. It requires 16-24 GB minimum RAM and 4-6 CPU cores, also minimum. Zing boasts the ability to execute JVM heap sizes of up to 1 TB.

My plan is to test the Zing product to increase performance and possibly reduce server counts.